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by Lucendia Halliday

Was your first reaction, “Oh I am not stupid, this cannot apply to me!”  First, I researched the definition of stupid.  I hear it all the time, but I never really looked it up.  I remember from the movie, Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does”.  (Details at the end of this article.) What does that mean and how to use this in our daily decisions?  After a 3-day seminar with entrepreneurs, I heard a lot of what I classify as stupid marketing assumptions, so I was inspired to write this.
Stinkin’ Thinkin’ also comes to mind. It is hard to learn if we think we are not capable, its not important or worse yet we think we already know everything on a subject.  All of these make us unteachable.

Definition of stupid

adj., -er, -est.
1.    Slow to learn or understand; obtuse.
2.    Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes.
3.    Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless: a stupid mistake.
4.    Dazed, stunned, or stupefied.
5.    Pointless; worthless: a stupid job.
6.    adjective
1.    Lacking mental and physical alertness and activity: hebetudinous, lethargic, sluggish, stuporous, torpid. Slang dopey. See action/inaction.
2.    Lacking in intelligence: blockheaded, dense, doltish, dumb, hebetudinous, obtuse, thickheaded, thick-witted. Informal thick. Slang dimwitted, dopey. See ability/inability.

Where the mind goes, the person follows. Where are your thoughts leading you? Our coaching program starts with the mindset, we call it developing a marketing mindset.  We are change agents, since for some believe they are expert marketers already.  They don’t study it daily or they didn’t sit at the feet of the masters worldwide but they are experts at sales and marketing.  We do some ego bustin’ too.  I started grad school with the question, “How do you know what you know?”  Granted I thought, what am I paying for?  I studied learning and human performance improvement.  This results in how to train adults.  This is the common thread of my career.   I believe children are easier to teach, they haven’t build up years of baggage or misbeliefs.

As business owners and even employees we need to challenge our belief systems and check out our theories.  In big business, it is called market research.  This also means testing and tracking of your marketing.  Do you really know how to do all this?  Who taught you?  Who where your teachers, role models, how do you know they have it right? How do you know you know?  Also, I learned that psychologists are taught that as people we are all 100% stupid about one thing or another!  Ouch!  We don’t know everything about everything.  In fact, we are so specialized we only know one little area and that requires lifelong learning on a daily basis.  Are you smart enough to know what you are stupid at?

As business owners, we make bad assumptions about our customers all the time.  We don’t ask them or we don’t ask the right questions in the right way because marketing is science too.  We fall in love with our products and services and assume the world does too.  My favorite marketing strategy is: competing on price alone.  Of course, people are going to rush to my business I save them time and money  - Guess What Big Deal! Everyone says that!  My second favorite marketing strategy is: I am all about quality  - Guess what, that is a given or you won’t be in business very long!  Every time I am asked to speak, I emphasize these are the stupidest, laziest, least effective way to do business unless you are Walmart (price) and even so that is questionable on certain days.  The most common mistake I see during these tough economic times is overreaction to late or unpaid bills.  We used to pick up the phone and ask why instead of assuming people are out to screw us, going bankrupt next week or whatever else comes to mind.  Yes Nordstrom’s still does make the phone call, do you in your small business?  

Do you really listen to your customers when they make comments and suggestions?  It is easy for our big egos to get in the way and blow it off. I suggest to my clients they log every comment and look for trends aka this is market research.  Big companies are so removed from their customers they pay big bucks for this data.  They like to manipulate their data to save careers and other nonsense but that is another article.  Don’t be a big, dumb company is the morale of that story.  As small business owners we are front and center and in our customers faces so why not ask.  How can I serve you better?  What do you like best and least about doing business with us?  If you like us how about a testimonial?  How about a referral?  The list goes on…..Hopefully you get the idea and better yet implement it today in your business.  I will be writing more about this subject later because I have only scratched the service with this article.

Check out our new website and give me feedback – good, bad and ugly, we have thick skin.  I just posted a new blog on the definition of marketing check it out on http://www.marketing-strategy-planning.com/marketing-articles

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P.S.  I hope this article make you just a little uncomfortable enough to crack a book, sign up for a class or a workshop, hire a coach, be a little more a lifelong learner in all your subjects of interest.  As a coach, my job is to be my client’s best friend or worst nightmare depending on what they are telling me. It is not to be liked, it is about results!  Yes I too have 3 coaches that supervise me on any given day!  I walk my talk to the best of my human ability.  :)

P.S. S.   As promised, after I goggled stupid is as stupid does here are my results:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=392986%20

“Forrest Gump’s “Stupid is as stupid does” is a variant of an old adage, “Handsome is as handsome does.” This saying appears in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and in Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd,” and can be traced as far back as the 14th Century.

“Handsome is as handsome does” basically means that true handsomeness has to do with a person’s behavior, not just a handsome face. The saying is also phrased in the forms “Pretty is as pretty does” and “Beauty is as beauty does.”

Forrest’s version of the saying means that stupidity is not just a surface thing derived from a person’s appearance. Stupidity is a matter of deeds, not looks. Like the other versions, it comes down to this: judge people by what they do, not by how they appear.”

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Marketing:

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. (Approved October 2007)”

So what is your definition?

I attended a seminar for the last 3 days and I heard various misconceptions of what marketing really is.  I realized there are a lot of people even small business owners that just don’t have a clue.  The stuff I heard if it was my truth would make me feel like I was manipulating, cheating and lying to my customers, prospects and in general not a nice person.

I view marketing as the most honorable profession in the world.  Marketers make the world go around.  We drive the economy, provide jobs and products and services for the world.  Now that being said I will not market certain products and services and use my gift for evil.  Our job is to tell the world, to get the word out. Ministers use us.  In fact I cannot think of an industry that doesn’t use us.  Like any talent we can use it for good or evil and all the grey areas in between.

Back to the AMA definition above, providing value that can mean information, education, above all communication.  Advertising is nothing more or less than communication with the masses.  We mirror back what is going on in society not try to manipulate society.  We have ethics and integrity just like you and your industries.

I also detected a lot of confusion with the definition of marketing and marketing vehicles.  Be it the internet, radio, direct mail, whatever these are vehicles that deliver our message.  I hear oh I tried that but it didn’t work.  It is not the vehicle it is your message a lot of the time that is ineffective!  The average business owner doesn’t know how to write copy, headlines, create irresistible offers, etc.  This is a science not an art!  We have proven ways that work and don’t. 

Writing in general is a craft.  Just because we can write a letter to Grandma or a college term paper does not mean we are writers. I learned it through apprenticeships, sitting at the feet of the masters and paying big bucks for my expertise and education.  Much like a doctor, we can’t diagnose or write a prescription until we ask questions and learn more about what is going on.

What good marketing isn’t?

It isn’t exaggeration, hype, cute, puns, and bait and switch, etc.  It isn’t evil, it is to be embraced.  It is the engine that grows your business.  Without customers you have no business.  It is selecting the people you want to do business with and repelling those you do not.  It is not being all thing to all people.

Marketing is targeted, specific and meaningful to your prospects, existing customers and others.  It is a set of systems and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and offers that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.  It is both science and art.  In a nutshell it is buying customers.  Of course we want to purchase them at wholesale rates not retail.  We want to spend as little as possible and get the most bang for our buck.  All of this is measurable.

I welcome your comments and feedback as to what you think marketing is or isn’t.

Lucendia

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I am a big believer in coaches and being coached. Our flagship product is my Principle-Centered Marketing Coaching™ Program. I make my living coaching.  And that’s why I’m writing this article because the truth is there are so many people out there claiming to be coaches when they’re really not, that they’re destroying a great profession.

Unfortunately, most of the coaching programs I see aren’t really coaching programs at all. They’re more like cheerleading programs. And most of the coaches are more cheerleader than coach. There is no real certification program for coaches although two main groups who claim to do this.

Coaching has become a “dumping ground” for anyone who wants to get paid to give advice. Maybe they want to be attorneys or counselors or psychotherapists, without having to get a license. Maybe they just don’t want to be called consultants. But just because they call themselves coaches, doesn’t make it so. Be sure to ask about the results the coach’s clients are getting with the coaching.

Too many of these so-called marketing coaches and their marketing coaching programs consist of a series of sessions where the coach asks the client, “Well, what do you want to accomplish?” The client answers and the coach basically winds up saying, “Well this week, go out there and get it done.”Of course they ask more than that and say more than that. I mean there are more words, but when you boil it all down, that’s what you get. It is not strategic and a logical path with building blocks to ensure your success.

What is a marketing coach?

A marketing coach is both your best friend and your worst nightmare. Your best friend because he or she tells and shows you exactly what you must do to achieve your goals. Your worst nightmare because, once shown, your coach makes you work, practice, more practice, build skill and actually do!  Just like an athletic coach does.  It is all about winning the game of market share and increasing sales the easiest, most cost-effective way there is…

Good coaches don’t make it up as they go along. Good marketing coaches have a program, systems, content, disciplines, exercises, drills. Good marketing coaches make you work, critique your efforts, make you work some more, make you do it over until you do it right.

Good marketing coaches are prescriptive and specific. I am firm believer in do it right the first time then you don’t have to continue to work at it.  Not that you get it right the first time.  On the contrary, focus and do it and have it critiqued and re-do until you and your target audience are happy with it then use it, test and revise as necessary.  Then move on to the next task at hand.

Fortunately, there are good marketing coaches – very good ones – out there. I’m one of them. How do you know? Because I guarantee results to the tune of at least 400% of what you pay me or your money back. I have learned that if a vendor will not guarantee results I will not do business with them because there is a high likelihood I will not get the results I want.

In the business world, I would say that is one of the measures of a good marketing coach. Is he or she willing and able to guarantee results?

Want to know what else to look for in a good marketing coach? Here are the rest of my criteria…

Your coach must be knowledgeable on two fronts

What to do and how to do it. What to dos aren’t enough. You can get most of that from books and tapes. How you do the whats can have an exponential impact on the results you get.One of my clients, a retailer in Ann Arbor, recently sent out a postcard solicitation.

At my direction he tested two different postcards. The pull-rate was very close on both. But one cost less for him to produce and fulfill. Without my how-to-do-it instruction, this client wouldn’t have been able to figure that out. Still not fully satisfied, we tested a third postcard, developed with heavy instruction from me. The third postcard out-pulled the other two by nearly two-to-one. I told him both what to do, and how to do it, and it paid off in spades.

Your marketing coach should walk their own talk. They should have their own marketing coach and be coached on a regular basis.  There is always more to learn and more to test in the marketing world.  A senior or lead marketing coach is functioning at a higher level but even the best of us are sometimes too close to the obvious that a newbie may pick up on faster than us.

Your coach must be capable of analyzing your work and giving you the proper feedback. Generalities aren’t very useful. Pats on the back, encouragement, and motivation are all great. But you can get those from your mother. If you want quantum leaps in any aspect of your life, your coach must be able to help you build skills. That takes an ability to see what can be improved and the ability to instruct you specifically on how those improvements can be made.

Your coach should be on the same or a similar level with you. Far too many of these so-called coaching programs employ college kids or rookie grads, or stay-at-home moms, or people with a proven, losing track record in business, to talk you through cookie-cutter processes with scripted procedures. In most of these cases, they don’t have real-world experience themselves and they wouldn’t know how to deal with a challenge that’s even slightly “off the page.”

Make sure the coaches you select have real-world working expertise in the area they claim to be coaching you in. (In no aspect of business or life is this more important than in marketing and advertising. These guys cannot be slackers, slouchers or amateurs. They’ve got to know their stuff, or not only will you be wasting money on them, you’ll find yourself wasting tons of money on marketing campaigns that won’t or can’t work. It could and likely will sink your ship.)

Which leads to the next qualification… flexibility. Yes, a good marketing coach has a system, complete with specific processes, lessons, instruction, exercises, etc. But the coach also has to be flexible. Good marketing coaches can adapt to the needs of the situation. That may require doing lesson 16 in session two. It may require coming up with a whole new idea, approach, lesson or recommendation, when the results you thought you would get don’t come rolling in. That takes real skill. Cookie-cutter coaches can’t pull that off.

The wanna-bees and pretend-to-bees are ousted when these circumstances poop up.  Just like the coach of a football team makes adjustments according to the real-time challenges his team is facing on the field, your coach should be perceptive and skilled enough to make specific adjustments and recommended changes, based on the specific circumstances and challenges you’re facing at any point in time.

A good coach has got to cost you enough. Generally people get paid what they’re worth. If your coach isn’t charging you enough, he or she probably isn’t good enough. This is one area where you can determine, at least to some degree, quality, based on price. The higher the price, the better the quality, as a general rule. Believe me, a good marketing coach is worth what you pay, and no matter how good the bargain, a bad marketing coach is a waste of money, time, effort and emotional energy.

So be careful about a marketing coach and all kinds of people claiming to be coaches without guaranteeing results. If what they’re doing for you should be done by a licensed professional, such as an attorney, psychologist or therapist, go to the real professional and forget the coach. If the help you seek really is within the scope of a marketing coach, use these criteria to make sure you get a good one or wait until you can.

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“Plan your work and work your plan.” You’ve undoubtedly heard that old saying before. Or perhaps you’re more familiar with the proverbial version: “He who fails to plan, plans to fail.” Marketing strategy planning follows in the same fashion.

Sound advice. Planning is essential if you are to make the most of your days, weeks, months and years. And nowhere is planning for success more essential than in the areas of marketing, advertising and sales.

But not all marketing plans are created equal, and neither is all marketing planning. As you head into the new year, have you completed your marketing plan? And how do you know it’s a good one? Most important, what have you done to make sure the marketing plan is bound to be implemented at the highest levels in your company?

Let’s take a look at some productive and futile ways to plan, then at some strong recommendations for you, heading into the new year…

FUTILE METHOD #1: The no-plan method.

This is classic seat-of-the-pants marketing. No plan and no strategy for success. No explanation required. Only a warning. If this is your method, you’re doomed to play on the field of mediocrity throughout your career. That may be okay with you. It may provide you a nice, comfortable living. But it will never be what it could be. And I suspect that’s not alright with you. If it was, you wouldn’t be reading this article.

FUTILE METHOD #2: The way we’ve always done it.

This is by definition a futile method, if you’re at all unhappy with your results. When you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. This is an inescapable truth, but this is the way most companies do their marketing strategy planning, budget and their marketing, advertising and sales plans.

Are you one of those companies that says, I know I need a referral system in my business? You’ve known it for year, haven’t you? Then why isn’t it in your marketing plan for 2010?

FUTILE METHOD #3: The one-dimensional plan.

If you’re entire marketing, advertising and sales program is focused on the effort to bring in new customers, you have a one-dimensional plan and you are ignoring the fastest, easiest, most cost-effective ways to bring in new revenues and profits. You’re forgetting about increasing your average transaction and getting existing customers, clients or patients to come back and do business with you more frequently.  Look. We both know you should be doing these things, but if you don’t plan for them, they ain’t gonna happen.

PRODUCTIVE METHOD #1: Objective-based planning.

Solid marketing strategy planning including marketing objectives. In this process, you define your specific goals for increasing customers, units of sale and frequency of purchase, along with profitability. These are called your marketing objectives.

Meeting marketing objectives should lead to sales. If not, you need to set different marketing objectives.

Your marketing objectives should: be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and contain timeframe or deadlines for implementation. Examples of marketing objectives follow:

• Increase product awareness among the target audience by 30 percent in one year.
• Inform target audience about features and benefits of our product and its competitive advantage, leading to a 10 percent increase in sales in one year.
• Decrease or remove potential customers’ resistance to buying our product, leading to a 20 percent increase in sales that are closed in six months or less.

If you have multiple objectives, make sure they are consistent and not in conflict with each other. Also, be sure that the remainder of your marketing plan components – the marketing strategy, budget, action programs, controls and measures – support your marketing objectives.

Examples of functional promotional objectives” might include:

• We aim to build customer database of at least 250,000 households within the next 12 months
• We aim to achieve a market share of 10%
• We aim to achieve 75% customer awareness of our brand in our target markets

Setting your marketing objectives and finalizing the remaining components of your marketing plan may serve as a reality check: Do you have the resources necessary to accomplish your objectives?

Then you develop specific programs for achieving those goals, fund them, calendar them and execute them according to schedule.

PRODUCTIVE METHOD #2: Comprehensive Marketing Strategy Planning

This is similar to objective-based planning, but with a few enhancements. A good, comprehensive marketing plan will include the following:

1. A situation analysis – Here is where you take a good, hard look at where you stand today, in terms of competition, product strengths, trends in the marketplace, past performance, buyer motivations, etc.
2. Objectives report – This is where the previous method began. Here you identify your sales and revenue goals, your market share targets, the awareness levels you want to reach in your market segments, your reputation, your unit of sale and frequency of purchase targets.
3. Strategies report – In this section of your plan, you’ll want to define the strategic approaches to reaching the objectives. These include looking at changes in your products or services, pricing strategy, collaborative ventures, media, PR, testing and tracking protocols, etc.
4. Marketing Objectives priority list – This is where you identify specific projects, campaigns and/or initiatives you will undertake to implement your marketing strategic approaches. You will have projects in the areas of new customer acquisition, unit of sale growth and frequency of purchase increase. You will prioritize them in order of most important to least important.
5. Your budget – Until now, you haven’t worried about budget, you’ve been focused on priorities. Now you can simply look at your most important priority and fully fund it. Then go down the list from most important to least important, and fully fund each project until you run out of projected marketing money.
6. Schedule – Finally, put it all on a schedule so you can see what needs to be done on a week-by-week basis, and what it’s going to cost you on a week-by-week basis.

Ha! Who am I kidding? Who is going to do all that? Well, to tell the truth, the people who want to be most successful, that’s who. But I’m not kidding anyone. This is the toughest way to do it because it requires the most discipline. And it usually requires the most lead time. Typically at least 90 days.

So if you don’t have that kind of time left – and you don’t if you’re working on a calendar year, you only have two options.

1) Go through the process anyway, because the time is going to pass anyway. Or,
2) Opt for the Action Plan Process…

PRODUCTIVE METHOD #3: The 30-Day Action Plan

For many, if not most small businesses, this may be the most productive method of all. In fact, even if you use either of the productive planning processes I’ve already mentioned, this approach may be incorporated into your plan as a mechanism for making sure things actually get done.

In this plan you are eating that marketing elephant one bite at a time. And you can always see the light at the end of the tunnel. Here is the process.

1. Begin with your highest priority marketing, advertising or sales project and identify a date no more than 30 days out when  that project will be implemented.
2. Break the project down into steps. These are essential milestones that must be met to complete the implementation of the project. Make a project plan with these manageable steps and give yourself credit when you complete these steps.
3. Make a decision about how much time you must spend EVERY DAY, to complete the steps by the deadline you’ve set. The every day bit is critical. This will help you accomplish more and focus on your priorities. If you don’t allocate time every single day, you’ll never develop the habit of working on this stuff and odds are most of it will never get done. I recommend a minimum of one hour per day and have it at the same time everyday.  Then it becomes a habit and part of your routine.  Try it..it works!
4. Stick to your schedule. If you determine it will take 30 minutes a day, work on the project for that 30 minutes and then get back to your other projects. If you think it’ll take an hour, plan for an hour. Don’t go over two hours. This again requires discipline to stop but very important to avoid burn out. If you miss a day, don’t try to make it up the next day by working twice as long on your project. Just understand that your schedule will slip a day because of the day you missed. Don’t get discouraged or down on yourself either. Just keep plugging away. Plan for this and add padding to your schedule. Have an accountability partner to keep you on track. This usually best left to someone other than your spouse or a family member.
5. Implement your project with joy and celebration and start tracking your results. Give yourself a pat on the back for your discipline and reward yourself for successes.
6. Pick another marketing project and begin the process over again.

Successful marketing strategy planning is all about planning your work and working your plan, yes. But it’s about more than that. It’s also about reaping the rewards of a well-thought-out, sensible approach to growing your business.

Final Thought:  “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” Raymond Viault, former CEO of Jacobs Suchard

Technorati Tags: marketing coach, marketing definition, marketing plan example, marketing strategy planning

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